Retired At 40

With a shrewd combination of financial planning and curtailed expenses, these men figured out how to make the most out of the best years of their lives.

- Meghna Panwar

When he turned 37, Satyajit ‘Toto’ Lahiri, “without family encumbrances” and no children, found himself “truly alone.” The past two years had been gruelling. Two consequent setbacks — his parents passed away in 2005, and his prolonged divorce proceedings finally ended in 2007 — had a profound effect on him, which set his mind ticking. He thought, “When I’m 64 and my most productive and active years are behind me, what do I want to look back on? And, what would be the process of making this a reality?”

Lahiri had been working as a communications director (India & SAARC) at CA Technologies, and had previously worked at several PR agencies and MNCs as a PR/services marketing professional; at a newspaper as a business correspondent; and freelanced as a roving writer, researcher and subeditor. With a schedule in which he was either “travelling or returning from a work tour/ event virtually every three days on average,” he set out to upend his arduous lifestyle. He decided to quit his “suit-and-tie corporate life for good.”